If you really believe that then I don't know what to tell you. You've been successfully brainwashed. I hope one day you're able to hold a 5 minutes conversation with an actual student and clear that bullshit out of your head.
You should really read those articles that you linked instead of ignorantly pointing at them in outrage, against something you clearly never engaged with other than through conservative media. At least read the Nature one, damn. It's directly addressed to people like you, who might think they have issues with this stuff, for reasons.
No one is out to cancel theorems or whatever other bullshit. Also those concerns over the freedom of science are rich coming from the party that's actually defunding labs, arresting researchers on ideological grounds and burning books.
It's dangerous because of post colonialism and earlier post structuralism is in its basis.
That philosophical school sees truth as being a fantasy and subservient to power.
Therefore it is common for an adherent of post-colonialism to believe a statement is true if it was made by a person arbitrarily considered oppressed, while the same logic might be false if made by an 'oppressor'.
As this approach makes all science to be political effort before a discovery effort, it was highly successful in the highly political environment of the academics, as it also has highly favorable economical results for its followers. (New departments, ability to religiously outcast the old, new postions)
The problem as it reaches the hard sciences, for example the religious sacrifice each ML paper needs to make to the gods of ethics, is that it assaults the very notion of truth by its very essence. It is easy to see why this is highly problematic for mathematics
> *At least read the Nature one, damn.* ~ @thrance
> *I read the article. It's dangerous nonsense.* ~ @ConspiracyFact
> *Where's the danger? Where's the nonsense in acknowledging the origins of algebra?* ~ @myself
Do you have _ any _ meaningful critique of the contents of, say, maths historian George Joseph’s book The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (1991) ?
This appears to be old established material that I read in the ANU library back in the early 1980s.
I read the Nature article, and I read the seminal work on the subject Orientalism by Said. The context of the article is post-colonialism, a very established philosophical movement. This is shown when they mention whether mathematics is socially constructed and in the actual title "decolonization". I then proceeded to criticize that movement and explain why it is a problem for mathematics.
You and the other poster responded with anger, I do not agree I am the one who is not meaningfully contributing
I could give your own post as an example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43685383 , where you judged a statement as false due to the presumed location of the author in the power/knowledge spectrum.
But sorry, it's hard to discuss when you quote a single sentence from the few paragraphs i've written and say it's wrong, with nothing added. When adding to it your replies in previous discussions we had such as this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43705166
I feel you are overly emotionally attached to the subject and this is approaching troll/flame territory. It's not that I don't want to discuss with you, but I feel in our engagements a lot of aggression and very little actual passing of information except for short sentences, so let's end it right here
What? Have you really read the Nature article? You're talking absolute nonsense here. No one is out to redefine mathematics, fuck!
You want real politicization of science? Check out the GOP's pomicies. They're the one cutting funding to organization that won't bow to their ideological lines. They're the ones barring access to foreign scientists for having criticized the dear leader online. They're the ones appointing political commissars to overview what's fine or not to work on in labs.
75% of scientists that ever published in Nature are now considering leaving the US [1] from fear of the administration. Is that not a concern to you?
Talk to any academic, ask them wether they fear more from blue haired teens or the looming fascist threat that is Trump and his cabinet. You may be surprised by the answer.
Fair enough, I am simply baffled that some people can still believe the threat to science comes from the left in the face of an overwhelming and unprecendented anti-science crusade from the right. Now I wonder what the current administration would need to do for you to change your mind. Behead scientists? They're already detaining them, so that's the next logical step.
You're beyond saving then, if basic historical research is "dangerous nonsense". What's the risk there? Discovering a theorem was known at an earlier point in history? Big whoop.
Seriously, what's the danger? Be clear. It feels like you peolple are unable to articulate anything more than "thouhtcrime!!".
Also, what do you think of the actual threats Trump made to academics? Is it dangerous too or not?
Well you do have a point. It would be absurd. Just like the opposite. Both decolonizing and "further" colonizing maths makes no sense and is a waste of time at best...
The arabs of the Abbasid Caliphate braided a rope by unifying Greek, Babylonian, and Indian mathematical and scientific works after translating original works into Arabic and extending them.
Since my example was apparently poorly chosen due to my own ignorance, and you're finding it worthwhile to have this discussion, I'll conclude that studying mathematical history ("decolonizing mathematics") is useful.
I agree, each UK citizen is infused with the original sin of being a colonizer and their opinion should be discarded until they purge this sin from their bodies through appropriate cleansing rituals.
Perhaps some form of self-flagelation or bloodletting?
Goodness gracious. Invoking religious self-harm imagery in response to mild criticism feels wildly out of pocket. Do you genuinely think anti-colonial activism demands this or anything even resembling this of post-colonial states?
It feels like a really silly way to deflect from the concept that maybe average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
Do you not find it out of pocket that you made a judgement about the validity of someone's opinion based on their (not even birth) nationality? Is there anything they could say or do to make their opinion worth listening to?
> Is there anything they could say or do to make their opinion worth listening to?
That’s the thing, I didn’t say their opinion isn’t worth listening to or consideration in general. Acknowledging bias isn’t the same as discarding opinion.
It's not though. It's either being obtuse or outright silly. How exactly does "decolonisation" figure in any of the things they said?
> average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
Even if they do, which is debatable (i.e. it's not clear they benefit more from it than people living in other European countries which didn't have extensive colonial empires) what does this have to with nonsensical subjects being taught in universities?
I'm not sure. They did supposedly organized "Decolonization in Mathematics" conference. I have no particular interest in figuring out what that means exactly on a non superficial level because it would be a waste of time.
I googled the term you put in quotes and found a lovely article in Nature that seems to indicate that it's mostly about correcting common lies in Mathematics history.
""
Fibonacci's sequence (i.e. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ...) was discovered in Africa long before the Italian wrote it down, in the form of Ghanaian textile cloth and Egyptian temple design. (1)
""
or:
""
It is long believed calculus was discovered by Leibniz and Newton, however there is evidence of Indians having discovered the subject 300 years earlier in the Kerala School. (2)
""
Fun trivia I guess. Also inconsequential if Fibonacci, Leibniz, Newton made their discoveries independently since further developments were based on their work.
It's like saying that Ancient Greeks and not Newcomen or Watt "invented" the steam engine... Again, interesting piece of historical trivia but hardly has much to do with physics as a science.
It's significant because we already have patterns of thought where we credit civilization and such to white people and it causes problems.
You might not realize it, but thousands of these tiny things over a lifetime creates a subconscious bias. And then that manifests in real ways. Like, for example, disregarding or discrediting an area of study you know nothing about based purely on the type of people who created the study.
I agree - trying to show that other people may have discovered things that we believe we did exclusively is abhorrent and those people deserve all the sanctions that we can impose on them.
If you really believe that then I don't know what to tell you. You've been successfully brainwashed. I hope one day you're able to hold a 5 minutes conversation with an actual student and clear that bullshit out of your head.
Yeah, I must be hallucinating with "bullshit in my head".
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00240-9
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/black-lives-ma...
https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/70845
You should really read those articles that you linked instead of ignorantly pointing at them in outrage, against something you clearly never engaged with other than through conservative media. At least read the Nature one, damn. It's directly addressed to people like you, who might think they have issues with this stuff, for reasons.
No one is out to cancel theorems or whatever other bullshit. Also those concerns over the freedom of science are rich coming from the party that's actually defunding labs, arresting researchers on ideological grounds and burning books.
I read the article. It's dangerous nonsense.
Where's the danger? Where's the nonsense in acknowledging the origins of algebra?
It's dangerous because of post colonialism and earlier post structuralism is in its basis.
That philosophical school sees truth as being a fantasy and subservient to power.
Therefore it is common for an adherent of post-colonialism to believe a statement is true if it was made by a person arbitrarily considered oppressed, while the same logic might be false if made by an 'oppressor'.
As this approach makes all science to be political effort before a discovery effort, it was highly successful in the highly political environment of the academics, as it also has highly favorable economical results for its followers. (New departments, ability to religiously outcast the old, new postions)
The problem as it reaches the hard sciences, for example the religious sacrifice each ML paper needs to make to the gods of ethics, is that it assaults the very notion of truth by its very essence. It is easy to see why this is highly problematic for mathematics
No part of your comment addresses any "nonsense" or "danger" in the Nature article ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00240-9 )
The context was:
Do you have _ any _ meaningful critique of the contents of, say, maths historian George Joseph’s book The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (1991) ?This appears to be old established material that I read in the ANU library back in the early 1980s.
I read the Nature article, and I read the seminal work on the subject Orientalism by Said. The context of the article is post-colonialism, a very established philosophical movement. This is shown when they mention whether mathematics is socially constructed and in the actual title "decolonization". I then proceeded to criticize that movement and explain why it is a problem for mathematics.
You and the other poster responded with anger, I do not agree I am the one who is not meaningfully contributing
Do you think there may have been developments in this space since 1978, when Said published Orientalism?
I don't mean to be rude, but do you think it's possible that your understanding of the situation is a bit out of date?
Maybe, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject.
Which part of my critique of post-colonialism do you think had become obsolete?
>Therefore it is common for an adherent of post-colonialism to believe a statement is true if it was made by a person arbitrarily considered oppressed
This part. I'm not sure if it's because it's out of date or just plain wrong, though.
I could give your own post as an example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43685383 , where you judged a statement as false due to the presumed location of the author in the power/knowledge spectrum.
But sorry, it's hard to discuss when you quote a single sentence from the few paragraphs i've written and say it's wrong, with nothing added. When adding to it your replies in previous discussions we had such as this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43705166
I feel you are overly emotionally attached to the subject and this is approaching troll/flame territory. It's not that I don't want to discuss with you, but I feel in our engagements a lot of aggression and very little actual passing of information except for short sentences, so let's end it right here
That isn't a response to what I was asking.
You just sent links to me without acknowledging the conversation we were having at all.
Very, very strange.
What? Have you really read the Nature article? You're talking absolute nonsense here. No one is out to redefine mathematics, fuck!
You want real politicization of science? Check out the GOP's pomicies. They're the one cutting funding to organization that won't bow to their ideological lines. They're the ones barring access to foreign scientists for having criticized the dear leader online. They're the ones appointing political commissars to overview what's fine or not to work on in labs.
75% of scientists that ever published in Nature are now considering leaving the US [1] from fear of the administration. Is that not a concern to you?
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00938-y
Politicizing the sciences is a huge issue from both sides, and Trump efforts are worrying
I currently worry more about the left though, as it is much more powerful in the academics, and actually creates political "science" today
?????
Talk to any academic, ask them wether they fear more from blue haired teens or the looming fascist threat that is Trump and his cabinet. You may be surprised by the answer.
you asked me though, and that is my opinion
Fair enough, I am simply baffled that some people can still believe the threat to science comes from the left in the face of an overwhelming and unprecendented anti-science crusade from the right. Now I wonder what the current administration would need to do for you to change your mind. Behead scientists? They're already detaining them, so that's the next logical step.
You're beyond saving then, if basic historical research is "dangerous nonsense". What's the risk there? Discovering a theorem was known at an earlier point in history? Big whoop.
Seriously, what's the danger? Be clear. It feels like you peolple are unable to articulate anything more than "thouhtcrime!!".
Also, what do you think of the actual threats Trump made to academics? Is it dangerous too or not?
Would you like to further colonise mathematics?
Algebra could be renamed Chestering, to credit the Englishman who did the real work of translating Al-Khwarizmi's text from Arabic into Latin.
Well you do have a point. It would be absurd. Just like the opposite. Both decolonizing and "further" colonizing maths makes no sense and is a waste of time at best...
Is colonizing now a synonym for cultural fusion?
Surely the arabs have been colonizing mathematics by translating the indigenous greek works
The arabs of the Abbasid Caliphate braided a rope by unifying Greek, Babylonian, and Indian mathematical and scientific works after translating original works into Arabic and extending them.
As well as everyone else, why is it colonizing when the west do it to arabic mathematics and not when the arabs do it to western mathematics?
That argument is rather weird as mathematics was never about culture, but rather about logical truth
Since my example was apparently poorly chosen due to my own ignorance, and you're finding it worthwhile to have this discussion, I'll conclude that studying mathematical history ("decolonizing mathematics") is useful.
[flagged]
I agree, each UK citizen is infused with the original sin of being a colonizer and their opinion should be discarded until they purge this sin from their bodies through appropriate cleansing rituals.
Perhaps some form of self-flagelation or bloodletting?
Goodness gracious. Invoking religious self-harm imagery in response to mild criticism feels wildly out of pocket. Do you genuinely think anti-colonial activism demands this or anything even resembling this of post-colonial states?
It feels like a really silly way to deflect from the concept that maybe average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
Do you not find it out of pocket that you made a judgement about the validity of someone's opinion based on their (not even birth) nationality? Is there anything they could say or do to make their opinion worth listening to?
> Is there anything they could say or do to make their opinion worth listening to?
That’s the thing, I didn’t say their opinion isn’t worth listening to or consideration in general. Acknowledging bias isn’t the same as discarding opinion.
> mild criticism
It's not though. It's either being obtuse or outright silly. How exactly does "decolonisation" figure in any of the things they said?
> average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
Even if they do, which is debatable (i.e. it's not clear they benefit more from it than people living in other European countries which didn't have extensive colonial empires) what does this have to with nonsensical subjects being taught in universities?
> what does this have to with nonsensical subjects being taught in universities
Since we’re bringing it back onto topic, has any university ever ran a “decolonised maths” program? What would that look like?
I'm not sure. They did supposedly organized "Decolonization in Mathematics" conference. I have no particular interest in figuring out what that means exactly on a non superficial level because it would be a waste of time.
I googled the term you put in quotes and found a lovely article in Nature that seems to indicate that it's mostly about correcting common lies in Mathematics history.
Seems relatively straightforward to me...
Things like:
"" Fibonacci's sequence (i.e. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ...) was discovered in Africa long before the Italian wrote it down, in the form of Ghanaian textile cloth and Egyptian temple design. (1) "" or: "" It is long believed calculus was discovered by Leibniz and Newton, however there is evidence of Indians having discovered the subject 300 years earlier in the Kerala School. (2) ""
Fun trivia I guess. Also inconsequential if Fibonacci, Leibniz, Newton made their discoveries independently since further developments were based on their work.
It's like saying that Ancient Greeks and not Newcomen or Watt "invented" the steam engine... Again, interesting piece of historical trivia but hardly has much to do with physics as a science.
It's significant because we already have patterns of thought where we credit civilization and such to white people and it causes problems.
You might not realize it, but thousands of these tiny things over a lifetime creates a subconscious bias. And then that manifests in real ways. Like, for example, disregarding or discrediting an area of study you know nothing about based purely on the type of people who created the study.
I agree - trying to show that other people may have discovered things that we believe we did exclusively is abhorrent and those people deserve all the sanctions that we can impose on them.
Where are those quotes from?
This appears to be the source: https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/school-of-mathematics/about-us/eq...
And don't forget people who like me are in the UK but weren't born there.